sweet and tender hooligan
by blossom in ribcage
Summary: Jackie is still reeling from her mother's sudden return, and Hyde tries his best to make her feel better. Set during S6.


I reaaaaalllllyyy hated this storyline. With the passion of ten thousand burning suns, honestly. I just don't buy that Hyde— who was abandoned by his own mother, and who showed compassion for both Donna and Jackie in the past— would feel anything other than contempt and disgust for Pam. So… fix-it time.

* * *

Hyde hesitates, before opening the door. He knows he's going to have to come face to face with Hurricane Jackie all over him, spewing hysteria and furious accusations, which he mostly deserves but doesn't want to deal with— but, Jackie is his chick and he signed up for this, and he can't deny that he's got some apologizing to do.

She's curled up crying, and something inside of him twists like a hot iron seeing it— he's never been able to handle girls' tears, especially not this girl's tears. "What is it, Steven?" she snarls, wiping a trail of foundation and mascara off with the ear of one of the stuffed animals festooning her bed. "Did you come here to tell me _all_ about how hot my mom is? Clean the drool off your chin first."

'You're right, Pam's hot." He has eyes, okay, even Red's heart monitor is beep-beep-beeping around her, and he didn't think anyone but Kitty could get that guy's motor running. "But guess what? She's also a soulless bitch who left you to pound shots in Acapulco, so I'm not interested. Eva Braun was hot too, I wouldn't hop in the sack with _her_."

Jackie looks up at him with tears pooling along her bottom lash line, and she doesn't say something dumb like 'Eva _who_ '? the way she would've around Kelso, and thank God for that, because it's the one thing (okay, okay, one of the things) that drives him fucking nuts about her. She might be obsessed with makeup and diets and cheerleading, she might have a messed-up view of relationships courtesy of Pam, she might base too much of her self-worth on her body, but she's got a 4.0, she listens to him talk about how Vietnam was a scam and the government killed MLK and keeps up. "It's not a big deal, I guess," she says in the tone she uses to test him. "I mean, Edna left you alone in your trashy house, and then your dad left you too, and you're okay, right?"

"Are you trying to get me to say that you're not allowed to be upset? Because you are. Being abandoned fucking _sucks_." He picks at one of the brightly-colored unicorns on her bedspread, his ears and the back of his neck burning, and remembers their first Veteran's Day date, how she tried to psychoanalyze him. He'd blown her off then, stuck his tongue out at her, but he can sense that won't cut it now. "Just because I don't cry like a little girl about it— or like Forman— doesn't mean I love the fact that Edna packed up her shit and drove off into the sunset without me."

She bites down on her— God help him, he knows it's dusty rose— lip. "Has she… called or anything?"

"Doubt she's ever sober enough anymore to remember how to operate a phone." He snorts out the side of his mouth. "Bet she's drank herself to death by now, and no one passed along the happy news to me."

"Steven, you don't mean that."

"Nah, I don't." He rubs one eye from behind the lens of his dark glasses, glad that he's shielded from her penetrating gaze. He wishes he did, wishes he could forget about Edna as easily as she forgot about him, though. "But… look. If she hadn't left, I wouldn't be eating Mrs. Forman's waffles every morning, I'd probably be in jail or pumping gas or something. Bailing on me is the best thing she ever did for me."

"My mom came back." She looks at him like he's the dumbest guy on earth, and he doesn't really like getting that look from a chick who needs ABBA blaring just to fall asleep. "There goes your lousy metaphor."

"Still doesn't mean she's much of a mom, even if everyone's swooning over her," he scoffs. "But you don't need her for shit anymore. Got better people in your life now."

"Do you think I'm like her?" The question is so quiet he has to strain to hear it. "You know… sometimes I look at her… and I feel like that's me in twenty years." The vapid one-liners, the flightiness, the materialism— she doesn't need to elaborate, Hyde saw enough of Malibu Barbie for a lifetime. "And I hate what I see."

"You think I'm just like Bud? 'Cause Edna never shut up about how similar we were." He reaches across the ocean of the bedspread and takes her hand, waits until her manicured fingers curl around his. "Pam isn't sitting around wondering if she's a shitty person, she just keeps on trucking with it. I know you. You pretend to be superficial— there's nothing under the surface with her."

"Oh, _Steven_ ," comes out of her in a snotty sob, and before he can blink he's got a lapful of Jackie, clutching at one of his few t-shirts without a hole or a rip— but that's okay. She's his chick. Dealing with the stomp-and-cry is just part of that.


End file.
